Educating Autonomous Vehicle Technicians

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Riverland Community College (RCC) in Minnesota is the home of an Automotive Service Excellence Education Foundation with an accredited Automotive Service Technology Program that has served the region for several decades. To meet the need for automotive technicians with appropriate skills in driver assistance and autonomous vehicles, RCC will improve outcomes for students as they complete their academic programs and enter the workforce. This program will graduate Automotive Technicians with Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and Autonomous Vehicle (AV) expertise. The project will leverage a recently renovated space that includes a 30,000 square foot building. The project will provide professional development, procure essential equipment, modify existing courses, and add new curriculum that will advance the skills of current and future automotive technicians with an Autonomous Vehicle Technician Advanced Certificate. Over the course of four semesters students will participate in training that will cover essential topics in AV and ADAS repair and maintenance. Utilizing new and existing relationships, the project will establish an Advisory Board that will ensure the transferability of skills between the classroom and the workplace. Instructors will develop and adapt curriculum relevant to ADAS and AV in cooperation with academic partners and collaborating automotive ATE projects and Centers across the country. This project will make the program more adaptable and responsive to rapidly evolving industry needs and will have more appeal to technologically advanced students. Through targeted outreach, the project will engage under-served populations to promote awareness and increase the diversity of the automotive technology workforce. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the Nation's economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.